


if the sun were only mine

by myhandisempty



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:37:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1653761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myhandisempty/pseuds/myhandisempty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His smile is blinding. It’s a Tuesday afternoon and Steve didn’t know the sun could shine so brightly this late in the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if the sun were only mine

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in the early hours of the morning, barely edited. All mistakes are my own. This is in no way a commentary on how I wanted their story to go, just a quick examination of something different.
> 
> Title from the song "Everything I Have is Yours" by Billie Holiday.

His smile is blinding. It’s a Tuesday afternoon and Steve didn’t know the sun could shine so brightly this late in the day. “Bullies always run,” he says, dusting off his sleeves, and Steve is mesmerized as he backs away. The boy looks at him, says “don’t go”. So Steve stays instead.

 

 

This is how it should have started:  
Bucky moves away in the summer.

His mother packs up threadbare bedding and rattling pans and well-worn tin soldiers wrapped up in kitchen towels and takes him over Grand Avenue Bridge. He promises Steve, as solemnly as if they were playing at army— _we’re soldiers, we’re protecting people, it’s the most important job in the world_ —that he will write him every day. But Queens may as well be the other side of the world to an eight-year old, and Steve is small, always so small; he can’t take up enough of Bucky’s memory in sight, let alone out of it, and he grabs Bucky’s arm while they’re saying goodbyes.

( _Don’t go_ , he wants to say, _you’ve made me your shadow now, you can’t be where I can’t follow_ , but Bucky smiles crookedly, says, “See ya soon, Steve!”, waves from the back window of the car, as if it’s that easy.)

Fourteen weeks, twenty-three letters, a ninth birthday later, Steve walks to the first day of third grade alone. He stands in the schoolyard, separate from the other children, books clutched to his chest, until there’s a tap on his shoulder.

Bucky’s standing there, an extra hole in his smile where a tooth used to be, and he’s apple pie in October, he’s stomping in rain puddles, he’s everything Steve likes even when he’s had too much. There’s a toy soldier in his hand, wrapped with a twine ribbon, and his arm is around Steve immediately, saying, “For a little guy, you sure walk fast,” and the figure is a birthday present, to make up for what he missed.

(Somewhere between the dragging summers and lightning quick winters, Steve realizes that Bucky returns every fall, bringing with him cool relief; that his exits are temporary like the seasons. They will always be over. He will always come back.)

 

 

This is how it started:  
Bucky doesn’t leave that summer, or any summer after.

He comes over day in and day out, or drags Steve to his place. They play make-believe games, continue doing so beyond the age where it’s probably acceptable, but Bucky appreciates it, and it’s something they can do even when Steve is sick at home in bed. He steers the pirate ship, the dread Captain Rogers, wheel made out of a trashcan lid, until his mother frowns and takes it away. Sometimes Bucky gets sick too; those are the longest days, and Steve wonders if anyone ever visits him, because Steve always has a cold or his mother won’t allow him.

Even when they finally outgrow pretending, Bucky is still a child at heart, more than Steve could ever be. Steve doesn’t worry so much about Bucky outgrowing their friendship, outgrowing _him_. He knows he wouldn’t be anyone else’s first choice in friend; he doesn’t understand why he seems to be the only person Bucky hangs out with after class.

(Eventually, Steve stops worrying about Bucky disappearing altogether, realizes he’ll always be there.)

 

 

This is how their story should have gone:  
Bucky doesn’t enlist, while Steve tries in vain.

There’s a long list of jobs to be done at home, Bucky tells him, encourages Steve while he works them as well. He’s helping, which is more than Steve can say for himself, and he bites his tongue when he finds himself wanting to tell Bucky that he could be doing more. They could both be doing more, if someone would give Steve a chance, for once.

(One night, Bucky comes home plastered without warning, collapses into bed, and Steve sees the words as if in neon, peeking out from under the rent bill, ORDER TO REPORT FOR INDUCTION; the next morning, the paper is gone, and Bucky announces with bravado that he’s decided to sign on, to head overseas, who knows, it might even be fun. Steve could never ask him for more, not after that.)

Bucky has to leave, soon after that, but the night before he ships out they make dinner together, and he tells Steve that he may miss a birthday, maybe even two before he’s home. Two hastily wrapped packages are pulled out from under the table, and Bucky slaps his hands away when he reaches for them. “They’re for your birthday,” he scowls, leaves them out on the table where he knows Steve will open them when they’re not in his sight.

The next morning, Bucky hugs him tight at the train station; his warmth sinks into Steve’s bones like it has done on a million freezing nights, and he’s saving him, Bucky’s still saving him, and it feels like winter so why is it now that he’s being left behind? Steve reaches for Bucky’s arm, holding it tightly in his grasp as Bucky lowers his lips to his forehead, brushing it gently with a kiss. “See ya soon, Steve,” he whispers, giving a wave as he slings his bag over his shoulder and turns to go.

They catch him on his fourth enlistment try, when a balding man with kind eyes introduces himself as Dr. Erskine. The doctor stamps a bright ‘1A’ on Steve’s form, and for the next week, he is a soldier. He trains and he runs and he lags behind, he’s the slowest and weakest, but Steve is a soldier and they can’t take that from him. Dr. Erskine approaches him at the end of the week; he’s full of stories and promises about a serum that will make Steve stronger, faster. Make him better. Steve furrows his eyebrows and asks if the army is interested in just him, the way he is. Erskine’s kind eyes say everything Steve feared.

Bucky doesn’t come back that fall.

Steve worries the last memory he’ll have of him is his hands shoved in his pockets, walking away.

 

 

This is how their story went:  
Bucky doesn’t enlist, while Steve tries in vain.

A divide deepens between them, crackles in the silence between clipped words. “You could be protecting people. The most important job in the world,” he reminds Bucky, who stares back with cool eyes and level head.

“I am,” Bucky shrugs a shoulder, not bothered in the least by the words.

(It bothers Steve, though; he is not so important. He is just like everyone else, is the entire point. He has no right to sit behind while fathers, husbands, sons die every day. He is just like everyone else. Only, less.)

Bucky enlists, eventually, and Steve’s self-righteousness gives way to resentment. It’s not fair of him—Bucky’s never really had it easy—but he does now, in the ways that matter to Steve. Bucky leaves him behind, leaves for England, leaves him with the saddest look Steve can imagine in his eyes, and he reminds himself that this is what he wanted, this is exactly what he asked for.

Steve gets exactly what he asks for, in every way. Not the way he expected, granted; he learned the casualty of war long before stepping foot on a battlefield, and he never thought stage fright would have a thing to do with it.

(He proves his bravery, with no laughter following it. He proves he can fight, and come out on top. He fights alongside Bucky, instead of having his messes cleaned up.

He saves Bucky. He _saves him_ , and he’ll never stop owing him, but it levels the playing field some when he rips the straps off of that table and his best friend smiles at him like he is the sun.)

Even on the other side of the world, Bucky has the saddest eyes.

 

 

This is how it should have ended:  
Bucky comes home wounded. Steve grows up.

The army awards him a Purple Heart, pins it to his chest a week after he leaves the hospital, two weeks after he feverishly apologizes to Steve, “I can’t take care of you. What use am I? I can’t take care of you anymore.” Steve, for his part, takes care of Bucky. He can’t be at the hospital twenty-four hours a day; he has a job now, a job at the docks, and Bucky blanches when he tells him this, stares at the newly developed muscles in his arms. The army taught Steve what he can do, and he trains himself with running and exercise, always careful of his asthma. He’ll never be tall, but he can be smart, he can be fast, he can be strong. Sometimes, he sees the Captain America comics in the newsstands, but he doesn’t wonder what could have been.

Bucky receives a stipend from the army, and despite Steve’s disagreement, insists on sending him to college with it. “You could go to art school,” he whispers to Steve in the middle of the night. “Your drawings will be famous, and I can say I knew you back when.” Steve doesn’t have the heart to tell him there won’t be a back when; instead, he takes the money and becomes a teacher, tries to make it up to Bucky by sketching him a picture every day, making sure to sign it with a flourish. The money he makes is good, good enough to get by, and Bucky starts talking more again, more about the war and his injury and he comes into the classroom and talks to Steve’s kids about it and then the whole school and before they know it he’s going all around the country, sharing his story.

Neither of them walks in anyone’s shadow.

There’s nothing where Bucky’s left arm used to be; just a hanging emptiness under a sleeve of fabric, devoid even of phantom pains, or so he claims.

Years later, when he thinks Steve is too drunk to remember, Bucky confides in him that in quiet moments, he still feels the panicked squeeze of Steve’s hand around it every time he has to go away.

 

 

This is how it ended:  
Steve can’t reach his best friend. Bucky dies.

Or, rather, he doesn’t—Steve doesn’t find out until sixty-nine years after the fact. He feels like he should have known. His best friend taken and used for unspeakable things, his other half lost and in need of help; there are some things you should just know.

The ghost that wears Bucky’s face stands across from him on the last helicarrier, and Steve calls him Bucky because he has nothing else to call him, because he was Bucky, once, despite the fact that his eyes are calm and blank, even the sadness stripped away. Steve fights, he fights for as long as he has to, and when there’s nothing else to fight for, he goes back and looks the ghost in the eyes.

(“You’re my friend,” he pleads to deaf ears. _I never wanted this. I wanted what I thought would make me happy. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. What makes me happy is you._ )

He falls, he falls, without Bucky ever _seeing_ him, _just look at me once and see me_ , and it takes so long, he wonders if Bucky’s fall lasted this long, he wonders if Bucky is falling right now, with him.

Steve wakes up and it’s still not over.

 

 

He holds all these things inside him: the guilt, the sorrow, the memories, good and bad, and throws them all out. Starts with the beginning instead.

And when he finds him again, on a Tuesday afternoon, eyes searching and terrified, hand reaching out, _Steve_ , he reaches back and squeezes his right arm. “Don’t go.”


End file.
